Re:Manawyrm/ISA8019 – RTL8019-based ISA network card, NE2000...
by voltagex_ on Thursday December 03, 2020 @06:01PM
(#25296568)
How long before the same thing - reimplementation or new design - of PCIe cards is possible by hobbyists?
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Re:Manawyrm/ISA8019 – RTL8019-based ISA network card, NE2000...
by q3k on Thursday December 03, 2020 @08:53PM
(#25298037)
Depends what you mean by hobbyist. PCIe-capable FPGAs are getting cheaper and cheaper, and there are plenty of devboards in a PCIe card form factor, just bring your own bitstream and I/O. Hell, you might be able to use the open source Yosys/NextPNR toolchain to target the Lattice ECP5's PCIe SERDESes some day [1].
Nothing prevents you from emulating, I don't know, an Intel PRO/1000 or RTL8169 on one of these boards, or rolling your own board design from scratch. All the datasheets are out there.